10 thoughts on “Let’s make fun of Indian people”

Laughing at the Indians!
or
The Leafs in the playoffs?
or
Best players is black, not Iginla black, I mean really black?
or
the fact that the narrator says that the Guru dude is coming to America, not Canada.

Hey BruB, from the point of view of anyone outside of Canada, “Coming to America” includes Canada. People in Africa, Asia, Europe, etc. consider “America” to be a continent, in which is a country also called “America.” It’s not so different from me saying “I’m going to Europe” and then landing in Spain. The difference, obviously, is that Europe doesn’t also have a huge looming country within it also called “Europe.”

Hey Fagstein, the 90s are over. It’s ok now to poke fun at racial stereotypes for the sake of comedy. We’re all grown up now and we can take it. The PC nazis have faded away. There’s a difference between comedic stereotyping and racism for pete’s sake!

Do you also think that Harold and Kumar movie is racist because (gasp!) they don’t pretend to be white and they use racial stereotyping as the launching pad for 99% of the jokes?

That’s fair enough, and I haven’t seen much of the Harold & Kumar stuff. But I still don’t see what’s so “racist” about that movie trailer. Sure, it’s poking fun at guru types who are trying to cash in on easily lead people, but it’s the phoney guru that’s under the spotlight, not Indian people per se.

It is true that he’s mimicing some stereotypical characteristics of Indian people. That’s arguably in poor taste, but there’s no value judgement attached. He’s not putting Indian people down because of that, although he is putting down snake oil salesmen.

How does this compare to Peter Sellers in “The Party?” You could argue that Sellers’ character was likeable, sweet even, while the Myers characters seems like a bit of a creep. But does that mean that mimicing stereotypes is acceptable if we like the character but not if we don’t like him? (And besides, the unlikeable part of the Myers character seems to come from his phoney guruness, not his Indianness.)

This reminds me of when that trailer for “Tropic Thunder” came out and all these people got upset because Robert Downey Junior was acting as a black guy. They all yelled “they should have hired a black actor!” Well duh! The CHARACTER is a white guy acting as a black guy!